> Yet the economic markets are reacting as if they were governed by stochastic parrots
uh last time I checked, "markets" around the world are a few percent from all time highs
AI is different
721–730 of 920 posts
Re: AI is different
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
A fine argument in principle, but even if we talk only about vision, the human visual system is much more powerful than a camera. Between brightly sunlit snow and a starlit night, we can cover more than 45 stops with the same pair of eyeballs; the very best cinematographic cameras reach something like 16. In a way it's not a fair comparison, since we're taking into account retinal adaptation, eyelids/eyelashes, pupil…
> In a way it's not a fair comparison, Indeed. And the comparison is unnecessarily unfair. You're comparing the dynamic range of a single exposure on a camera vs. the adaptive dynamic range in multiple environments for human eyes. Cameras do have comparable features: adjustable exposure times and apertures. Additionally cameras can also sense IR, which might be useful for driving in the dark.
Exposure adjustment is constrained by frame rate, that doesn't buy you very much dynamic range.
A system that replicates the human eye's rapid aperture adjustment and integration of images taken at quickly changing aperture/ filter settings is very much not what Tesla is putting in their cars.
But again, the argument is fine in principle. It's just that you can't buy a camera that performs like the human visual system today.
Re: AI is different
#723I think so too - the latest AI changes mark the new "automate everything" era. When everything is automated, everything costs basically zero, as this will eliminate the most expensive part of every business - human labor. No one will make money from all the automated stuff, but no one would need the money anyway. This will create a society in which money is not the only value pursued. Instead of trying to chase paper…
> people would do what they are intended to - create art and celebrate life
We could have the same argument right now with UBI. But have you ever met the average human being?
Re: AI is different
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s one of the interesting things about innovation, you have to believe that things are possible before they have been done.
Believing a thing is possible doesn’t by itself make it so, however.
This is kind of weird. It's like saying "Driving in snow is impossible", well we know it is possible because humans do it.
And this even ignores all the things modern computer controlled vehicles do above and beyond humans as it is. Take most people used to driving modern cars and chunk them an old armstrong steering car and they'll put themselves into a ditch on a rainy day.
Really the last things in self driving cars is fast portable compute and general intelligence. General intelligence will be needed for the million edge cases we need while driving. The particular problem is once we get this general intelligence a lot of problems are going to disappear and bring up a whole new set of problems for people and society at large.
Re: AI is different
#725AI has been improving at a very rapid pace, which means that a lot of people have really outdated priors. I see this all the time online where people are dismissive about AI in a way that suggests it's been a while since they last checked-in on the capabilities of models. They wrote off the coding ability of ChatGPT on version 3.5, for instance, and have missed all the advancements that have happened since. Or they t…
There are also a bunch of us who do kick the tires very often and are consistently underwhelmed.
There are also those of us who have used them substantially, and seen the damage that causes to a codebase in the long run (in part due to the missing gains of having someone who understands the codebase).
There are also those of us who just don’t like the interface of chatting with a robot instead of just solving the problem ourselves.
There are also those of us who find each generation of model substantially worse than the previous generation, and find the utility trending downwards.
There are also those of us who are concerned about the research coming out about the effects of using LLMs on your brain and cognitive load.
There are also those of us who appreciate craft, and take pride in what we do, and don’t find that same enjoyment/pride in asking LLMs to do it.
There are also those of us who worry about offloading our critical thinking to big corporations, and becoming dependent on a pay-to-play system, that is current being propped up by artificially lowered prices, with “RUG PULL” written all over them.
There are also those of us who are really concerned about the privacy issues, and don’t trust companies hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to some of the least trust worth individuals with that data.
Most of these issues don’t require much experience with the latest generation.
I don’t think the intention of your comment was to stir up FUD, but I feel like it’s really easy for people to walk away with that from this sort of comment, so I just wanted to add my two cents and tell people they really don’t need to be wasting their time every 6 weeks. They’re really not missing anything.
Can you do more than a few weeks ago? Sure? Maybe? But I can also do a lot more than I was able to a few weeks ago as well not using an LLM. I’ve learned and improved myself.
Chances are if you’re not already using an LLM it’s because you don’t like it, or don’t want to, and that’s really ok. If AGSI comes out in a few months, all the time you would have invested now would be out of date anyways.
There’s really no rush or need to be tapped in.
Re: AI is different
#726We are not there, yet, but if AI could replace a sizable amount of workers, the economic system will be put to a very hard test. Moreover, companies could be less willing to pay for services that their internal AIs can handle or build from scratch. There will be fewer very large companies in terms of human size. There will be many more companies that are much smaller because you don't need as many workers to do the s…
Similarly flawed arguments could be made about how steam shovels would create unemployment in the construction sector. Technology as well as worker specialization increases our overall productivity. AI doomerism is another variation of Neoluddite thought. Typically it is framed within a zero-sum view of the economy. It is often accompanied by Malthusian scarcity doom. Appeals to authoritarian top-down economic management usually follow from there.
Technological advances have consistently unlocked new, more specialized and economically productive roles for humans. You're absolutely right about lowering costs, but headcounts might shift to new roles rather than reducing overall.
Re: AI is different
#727AI has been improving at a very rapid pace, which means that a lot of people have really outdated priors. I see this all the time online where people are dismissive about AI in a way that suggests it's been a while since they last checked-in on the capabilities of models. They wrote off the coding ability of ChatGPT on version 3.5, for instance, and have missed all the advancements that have happened since. Or they t…
There is another big and growing group: charlatans (influencers). People who don't know much but make bold statements, select 'proof' cases. Just to get attention. There are many of them on youtube. When you someone on thumbnail making faces this is most likely it.
> There are many of them on youtube.
Not as many as on HN. "Influencers" have agendas and the stream of income, or other self-interest. HN always comes off as a monolith, on any subject. Counter-arguments get ignored and downvoted to oblivion.
Re: AI is different
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans use only cameras. And humans don't even have true 360 coverage on those cameras. The bottleneck for self-driving technology isn't sensors - it's AI. Building a car that collects enough sensory data to enable self-driving is easy. Building a car AI that actually drives well in a diverse range of conditions is hard.
That's actually categorically false. We also use sophisticated hearing, a well developed sense of inertia and movement, air pressure, impact, etc. And we can swivel our heads to increase our coverage of vision to near 360°, while using very dependable and simple technology like mirrors to cover the rest. Add to that that our vision is inherently 3D and we sport a quite impressive sensor suite ;-). My guess is that th…
I mean, technically what we need is fast general intelligence.
A lot of the problems with driving aren't driving problems. They are other people are stupid problems, and nature is random problems. A good driver has a lot of ability to predict what other drivers are going to do. For example people commonly swerve slightly on the direction they are going to turn, even before putting on a signal. A person swerving in a lane is likely going to continue with dumb actions and do something worse soon. Clouds in the distance may be a sign of rain and that bad road conditions and slower traffic may exist ahead.
Very little of this has to do with the quality of our sensors. Current sensors themselves are probably far beyond what we actually need. It's compute speed (efficiency really) and preemption that give humans an edge, at least when we're paying attention.
Re: AI is different
#729> However, if AI avoids plateauing long enough to become significantly more useful and independent of humans, this revolution is going to be very unlike the past ones. Yet the economic markets are reacting as if they were governed by stochastic parrots. Aren't the markets massively puffed up by AI companies at the moment? edit: for example, the S&P500's performance with and without the top 10 (which is almost totally…
As someone who keeps 401k 100% in sp500 that scares me. If the bubble pops it will erase half of gains, if the bubble continues then the gap(490 vs 10) will grow even larger.
Re: AI is different
#730I wouldn't trust a taxi driver's predictions about the future of economics and society, why would I trust some database developer's? Actually, I take that back. I might trust the taxi driver.
You shouldn't care about the "who" at all. You should see their arguments. If taxi driver doesn't know anything real, it should be plain obvious and you can state it easily with arguments rather than attacking the background of the person. Actually, your comment is one of the most common logical flaws (Ad Hominem), combining even multiple at the same time.
I jokingly alluded to antirez as HN crowd pars pro toto. I agree it doesn't pass as an intellectually honest argument.